


Future, Perfect

by Sprencenspire



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sprencenspire/pseuds/Sprencenspire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astrid always knew this day was coming, and now that it's here she can't imagine it any other way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future, Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Future, perfect.

Astrid always knew the day was coming. 

Dragged into the air, clutched in the claws of a black demon that Hiccup, useless, clumsy, ridiculous Hiccup, had somehow managed to tame, she’d known. Flying through the air, watching as boy and beast became one, she’d known. Watching, terrified and grief stricken, as a man she thought was unbreakable, broke, only to mend when obsidian wings unfurled to show a burden… almost… safely carried, she’d known.

Even with all of that however, it still came upon her with a suddenness she hadn’t expected, creeping up on her like Winter overtook Summer, until you woke up one morning to see icicles hanging from the eaves and wondered where the months had gone. 

The years passed with a speed that shocked her now. They all grew. Up, out, closer, apart. It was a frantic blur of learning and adapting, to each other, the dragons, and their places in a tribe that was suddenly waking up to a world where every day wasn’t lived in constant fear. It wasn’t a surprise that some things everyone had assumed would come to pass didn’t, while others no one had ever even thought to imagine suddenly seemed commonplace.

Hiccup and Toothless became the centre of a whirlwind of learning and experimenting that soon consumed their entire world. She became a distraction, a passing fancy that was overtaken by duties and obligations to a tribe that had previously shunned one and attempted to kill the other. She’d known it was over between them before Hiccup had even realised there was a problem. She’d seen the looks from Stoick, heard the comments and advice from her own mother, but she chose not to fight it.

She’d always known the day was coming.

The day where Hiccup would become more a part of the world of dragons than men.

His stuttering apology when he finally worked it out had been as wonderful as it was heartbreaking. She’d watched as he tried to return to her, to come back to a village and a tribe that he was slowly leaving behind, and she’d calmly turned around and told him she didn’t mind. Because the truth was, she really didn’t.

Not because she was a better person than most. Not because she didn’t love him. Because she looked at what he was creating, what they were both creating together, dragon and man, and realised that this sacrifice was worth it. She could give up Hiccup, let him become more than just a tribesman of Berk, and know that this was a price worth paying to see the future unfolding before her. To see a future filled with plenty for all, as dragons and men came to live and work together. A future where children no longer feared the long, cold Winters, curled up in the warm sheltering coils of dragons.

And sometimes she would see them, Hiccup and Toothless, at opposite ends of the village, yet somehow still aware of each other in a way that none of the other riders seemed able to achieve. A friendship that seemed to transcend species and distance. 

And if sometimes she would see them off by themselves, sitting alone on the high point, looking off to the north, with the same faraway look in their eyes, she understood that she wasn’t the only one of them who knew that the day was coming. 

So she stopped looking at them, let herself pretend that time didn’t march inexorably on. 

Until before she knew it she was celebrating her twentieth birthday, and the next generation had already arrived, their forms scattered throughout the room, bundled up in blankets clutched to maternal chests and comforted by the flame warmed breath of dragons. Hiccup and Toothless seemed more pleased than anyone, quietly observing the village from their secluded corner, as a mother Nightmare watched her young. Their presence seemed more permanent than even the rock upon which Berk sat.

Even so, Astrid still knew the day was coming. 

It finally arrived with the turning of the seasons, as all good changes do. With celebrations in full swing and dragons and Vikings alike making too much noise, the village welcomed summer with a boisterousness in keeping with a celebration marking the end of the dark, cold winter. But as she turned to look for Hiccup and Toothless, their constant presence, she found them missing from the scene.

There were a million reasons they might not be there. Hiccup was forever running late for everything, forgetting even the most major of events. Or they might have gone flying. Some days they disappeared for hours on end without warning or explanation.

This time however, something was different. She didn’t know what or how she knew, but without making a scene she quietly extracted herself from the crowd of scales and furs and slid carefully out of the hall into the rapidly approaching evening.

It was almost as though they were waiting for her, a young man and a dragon, standing together at the edge of the forest.

Astrid always knew the day was coming. 

She could already feel the tears building as she made her way over to them. Slow steps at first, as though she could delay the inevitable, then faster, as if they would leave before she reached them. Hiccup’s arms were ready for her, catching her as she hurled herself into them, warm scales supporting him as his injured leg gave slightly under the pressure.

“Now? It really has to be now?” The tears make her words slightly slurred, but she mentally congratulates herself that they’re not an unintelligible mess.

“Something’s happening Astrid, something big. I don’t know what or why, but we have to go.” She feels rather than sees as his head turns once more to look north and hears the wondering and excitement hidden under the loss and sadness. Hiccup was lost to her a long time ago, but she feels as though this time it’s worse. The calm acceptance of years ago is gone, replaced by the knowledge that she is about to lose a friend.

“I knew this was coming. I just always imagined it would be when we were both old and grey and neither of us could pick up an axe anymore.” She pulls back slightly, wiping at her face and succeeding only in smearing the moisture from her tears rather than removing it. “Well, I suppose you never could use any sort of weapon, so we’ve always been halfway there.” His face cracks into a smile that she answers, but all too soon that faraway look returns.

“You be careful out there alright?” She turns to huge bright green eyes. “And you, you look after him ok.” Toothless gives her a look that seems to call her stupid for even suggesting otherwise.

“Have you told anyone? Your father…” His hands close over hers and she feels the crackle of expensive parchment.

“This is for him.” His eyes flick over her shoulder back to the village, where bright lanterns and the sounds of laughter just reach them. “Maybe give it to him in the morning though. Let him enjoy this.” She slips the piece of parchment under her cuff as she steps further away, but he grabs hold of her hand again, halting her only a step away.

His lips are on hers and gone almost before she can blink, a ghost of a touch that she feels will probably linger a lot longer than it should. 

“I would have stayed for you.” She looks up, knowing that the two beings before her are separate entities, but somehow seeing only a single whole. 

“I know.” The way Hiccup leans against Toothless, the way he’d leapt in front of his own father’s axe. “That’s why I couldn’t ask.” She can’t help the smile then, even through the tears, and he smiles back, his hand letting go and almost unconsciously returning to stroke down midnight black scales.

“You ready to fly, buddy?” Hiccup can’t possibly see the twitch of ears behind him, but where Toothless is concerned, he doesn’t need to.

Astrid always knew this day was coming.

Still the sudden gust of wind as Toothless takes them into the sky, away from her and from Berk, takes her by surprise. The two of them move as one, their eyes and thoughts already so far away from her in both time and space.

They’re gone much faster than they should be, the black scales blending into the night so perfectly that in moments not even the paleness of Hiccup’s skin is discernible in the night.

She takes a moment, just a minute, to pull herself together, watching the spot she last saw them.

Behind her the village is alive with life and light, the loud cries of man and dragon combined to warm the night around her with the vital sounds of her own future. She watches for a moment as a drunken warrior stumbles across the uneven ground, a victim of the shifting shadows and his own overindulgence in drink, only to be caught and steadied by the dragon next to him, the two of them disappearing around the corner of the great hall. She looks at the buildings of the village, sees the extent to which the town has grown, is still growing, and realises that the young children being held by their mothers back at the party will grow up in a house that is older than they are.

Astrid always knew the day was coming, and now that it’s here she couldn’t imagine it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Well... Umm... your request was for something focussing on Hiccup and Toothless friendship and somehow this turned into a schmoopy, sad, yet optimistic mess... I really did try to put in Hiccup and Toothless but as soon as I started writing from Astrid's PoV it just seemed to flow into this.
> 
> I'm not completely happy with the end result, I think it needs to be padded out quite a bit to allow some more exposition, but to be honest, I just didn't have time to do that. I'll have to take a crack at it next year and see if I can rewrite it better. If I get the chance I will reupload it for you in final form!
> 
> In the meantime I hope you liked it anyway!


End file.
